I’m back from ALA, but I hope that before Conference gets too far behind us that everybody takes a few minutes to read Christopher Myers’ meditation on the killings in Orlando that happened earlier this month. Chris proposed this piece to me last Tuesday night via email and got it to me Thursday morning; we both worked fast to get the essay up that afternoon, as we wanted ALA attendees to be able to read it while they were not twelve miles from Pulse, the gay club where Omar Mateen killed forty-nine people.

 

For thirty-five years, ALA Conference has been a place I’ve experienced, as Chris writes of clubs, as a “safe haven for queer folks.” Queer in the old sense (although ALA is also a great place to be queer in the new, too), just a really odd lot of folks who come together twice a year for communion, coffee hour, and the Word. Although I moan histrionically about having to go twice a year, I wouldn’t miss it.

 

You will find a whole bunch of ALA stuff on the website this week, including the Newbery, Caldecott, Wilder, and Coretta Scott King speeches. I was so pleased to hear Jerry Pinkney’s two speeches, first at the CSK breakfast and then that same evening at the ALSC banquet. Between the two events (and thank you for your hospitality in taking me, Random House and Little, Brown) I listened to twelve speeches in fifteen hours, and Jerry’s were the quietest. Always listen to the quiet ones.